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Programming Language

Fortran

Also Known As Formula Translation
Procedural Language

Fortran, from Formula Translation, is a programming language released by IBM in 1957 for scientific and engineering computation, and is generally regarded as the first widely used high level programming language, letting programmers write formulas in something closer to ordinary mathematical notation instead of machine instructions. Designed by a team led by John Backus, it remains in active use today in high performance scientific computing, and its early success helped establish that programs written in a human readable language could run about as fast as hand written machine code, a claim doubted by many at the time.

Facts
First Released
1957 1
Paradigm
Imperative, procedural 1
Significance
The first widely used high level programming language, proving that compiled code could rival hand written machine code in speed. 1
Connections

In Field

Software Engineering, Fields
Source Computer: A History of the Information MachineMartin Campbell-Kelly and William Aspray

Influenced

PL/I, Programming Languages

Invented By

John Backus, Pioneers
Source ACM A.M. Turing Award Citations
Sources
1. Computer: A History of the Information Machine
Martin Campbell-Kelly and William Aspray, Basic Books, 1996
Wikipedia: Fortran
Wikimedia FoundationLead section
Quote, Lead section
Fortran is a third-generation, compiled, imperative programming language designed for numeric computation and scientific computing.
View the Source
ACM A.M. Turing Award Citations
Association for Computing MachineryInvented By: John BackusView the Source
Frequently Asked Questions

What does the name Fortran stand for?

Fortran comes from Formula Translation. Its first manual called it a Formula Translating System.

The name Fortran comes from Formula Translation. The first manual for the language described it as a Formula Translating System, and printed the name in small capitals, Fortran. IBM delivered the first Fortran compiler in April 1957, built for scientific and engineering computation, where the point of the name was letting programmers write formulas in something closer to ordinary mathematical notation than machine instructions.
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